Free Twitter Web Analytics; Tweet Button Is 3 Million Sites Strong

At last, Twitter has announced their much desired Web Analytics dashboard! Twitter’s Web Analytics dashboard displays how content is shared throughout the network, how much traffic Twitter is driving to a publisher’s site, and also displays how much engagement a Tweet Button is actually producing. At present, Web Analytics is rolling out to a small group of partner sites – but don’t fret! Twitter is estimating that it will be available to all website owners over the next few weeks.

Even more interesting is the mention of a Twitter Web Analytics API, something that is bound to add even more analytical relevance to the way people are acting on content throughout Twitter. Much like Google Analytics, Twitter’s Web Analytics will be available to web publishers for free.

Twitter Web Analytics Dashboard

The analytics dashboard is broken into four separate navigation tabs. The first tab, ‘Traffic’, displays the number of tweets linking back to a publisher’s site, along with the number of clicks on those specific links. Timeline wise, you are able to view the graph for a single day, a week, or a month.

The ‘Tweets’ tab displays all tweets containing links to the publisher site, including any tweets that were sent through Twitter’s tweet buttons. A neat feature, the administrator is able to retweet and reply to those individual tweets from within the dashboard itself.

The ‘Tweet Button’ tab displays engagement in relation to the site’s Tweet Buttons, and the ‘Content’ tab breaks down shared content and shows top performing pages. With Twitter releasing this information through an API, we can begin to see some true analytical value and reporting, especially when integrated and/or reported with other analytical solutions.

Twitter – The Traffic Driver

The measurability of Twitter hasn’t always been easy. Back in August, Twitter moved forward in an attempt to clean up its analytics data, creating its t.co URL shortener and applying it to all tweeted links more than 19 characters. Prior to t.co, referring Twitter traffic would be displayed as different referrers. There was Twitter.com, any of Twitter’s client applications, any third-party applications, and traffic from the huge list of URL shorteners.

When considering the various referrers and methods of tracking, Twitter often wasn’t credited for sending the traffic. With the present setup, all tweeted links will be sent through t.co , and all clicks from Twitter will be displayed as coming from a single referrer. This will help improve accuracy and measurability, but publishers may also appreciate Twitter’s traffic driving ability.

The focus of Twitter Web Analytics is to allow publishers to accurately measure both inbound and outbound traffic, and the effectiveness of both. With Twitter growing to over 100 million active users, an increase of 105% so far this year alone, and the Tweet button that’s being used by over 3 million websites, it’s undeniable that Twitter is a huge traffic driving source for publishers.

Armed with analytics and API, users and businesses can finally take campaign planning and engagement to a new, measureable level.